WITH the aim of providing teenagers and adolescents the necessary skills needed to navigate young adulthood and the world of work, a local non-governmental organisation (NGO), Youths Arise Guyana, on Friday last, started a life skills workshop at the Brickdam and Carmel Secondary Schools in Georgetown.

The workshop, which is being pioneered by Dwright Ward and Micheal Richmond, will see fourth and fifth form students from several schools across Georgetown and Region Four benefitting from vigorous discussions on financial literacy, leadership skills and other social issues.

Ward, during an interview with this newspaper, stated that, over the next 15 weeks, a team from the organisation will be visiting as many schools as they can to engage students. The team plans to cover issues such as gender equality and peer pressure among many other societal issues.

“Micheal Richmond and I are both passionate about youth empowerment and advocacy so we came together and we initiated the thought,” Ward said.

The recent University of Guyana graduates, who got to know each other from ‘after school lessons’, said that, with their connections – Ward being a youth activist and Richmond, a philanthropist – they could make it happen and so they are moving forward with the goal of bringing awareness to issues plaguing society.

According to Richmond, the first meeting at Brickdam Secondary went better than expected as students reached out after the workshop to commend their work. The students shared that the session was very informative as they were very interested in the topics discussed.